Iranian President: President Hassan Rohani Is Widely Ahead

Hassan Rohani votes in Tehran on Friday 19 May 2017 during the first round

It is still too early to announce that there will be no second round in the 2017 presidential election in Iran, but the first partial results are promising for the reformers’ camp. According to the Ministry of the Interior, after counting 25.9 million ballots, the president wins 14.6 million votes against 10.1 million for the conservative Ebrahim Raissi. Hassan Rohani can hope for an absolute majority.

The outgoing ahead of his conservative opponent in the first round of the Iranian presidential 2017, which took place Friday, May 19. In the aftermath of the election, “out of 25.9 million spoiled ballots, Hassan Rohani gets 14.6 million and Ebrahim Raissi 10.1 million,” said Deputy Interior Minister Ali Asghar Ahmadi live on The state television Irib. And to specify that the participation is more than 40 million voters, out of 56.4 million registered ( more than 70% ).In percentage terms, on the basis of these still very partial results, Mr. Rohani would have obtained about 57.6% of the votes and Mr. Raissi 39% of the votes. What can we hope for an absolute majority – which is, of course, not yet for the moment? If the election was played from the beginning between two men, four candidates took part in the first round. The Ministry of the Interior must gradually announce the results that arrive from different provinces before those of the big cities, including Tehran.

But the two “small candidates”, a reformer and a conservative, scarcely got a few hundred thousand votes on partial results, and the outgoing president’s lead could, in fact, be accentuated since the scores announced for the Voting in the provinces; They do not yet understand the trends of big cities, and especially the capital, more favorable to Hassan Rohani. The president is, therefore, moving towards a possible strengthening of his power.Even before the announcement of more comprehensive results, conservative leaders are already anticipating a victory of the outgoing reformist president, who favored a continuation of the opening up of Iran’s nuclear agreement during his first term. ” The first counts show that Mr. Rohani is the winner … and we must congratulate him,” wrote on the Telegram channel Alireza Zakani, former Conservative MP and active support of the campaign against the reelection of the president.

In any case, the so-called “moderate” camp in Iran should, therefore, be able to pursue its policy of reform, both internally and in terms of openness to the world. During the campaign, President Rohani called on voters to participate massively in giving him more votes than four years ago. In 2013, he was elected with a little more than 50% of votes in the first round, recalls our correspondent in Tehran, Siavosh Ghazi.